Woman stops on road to help ducks, faces life in jail for deadly car crash

A Canadian woman was found guilty of criminal negligence over two road deaths caused by her stopping her car at a highway to help ducklings. The charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The jury on Friday
delivered guilty verdicts on all four charges faced by Emma
Czornobaj, 25. Sentencing is expected in early August.

Czornobaj was prosecuted over a June 2010 incident in which two
people died. Stopping her car on a highway in Candiac, Quebec,
Czornobaj, a professed animal lover, saw some ducklings on the
roadside without their mother and thought she should pick them up
and bring them home, she told the court.

Moments later André Roy, 50, riding a motorcycle, slammed into
her car. Both he and his daughter Jessie, 16, who was riding
pillion, died in the collision.

“I saw a body go over the car. It looked like a rag
doll,” witness Martine Tessier testified, as cited by the
National Post newspaper. “I shouted to my daughter to call
911.”

She said Czornobaj’s car was stopped at the leftmost lane of the
highway and that its hazard lights were not on.

A provincial police officer told the court that Roy was driving
at an estimated speed of 113 km/h to 129 km/h when he applied his
brakes. The prescribed speed limit on the road is 90 km/h.

Roy’s widow, Pauline Volikakis, was at the trial to hear the
verdict. On the night of the incident she was also riding her own
motorbike on the road, behind her husband, but at a slower speed.
She managed to avoid injury. During the trial, Volikakis stressed
that she was not the one pressing charges against Czornobaj.

“It’s not me that’s bringing her to court,” she said.
“I have no expectations concerning this trial.”

She was willing in April to plead guilty in the trial, her lawyer
Marc Labelle said, but the prosecution refused to offer her a
plea bargain that would enable her to avoid jail time.

Labelle may file an appeal, considering that usually criminal
negligence convictions involve elements of criminal intent on the
part of the convict, he told reporters after the verdict was
delivered.

“This was not a race. This was not a person who took a chance
and drove drunk. This is not about someone who was speeding and
took a risky maneuver,” Labelle told reporters.

He added that his client might only merit a sentence that can be
served in the community and that he may request a pre-sentence
investigation report when the case comes back to court on August
8 for sentencing. It would give the judge more information on
Czornobaj, including her lack of criminal record and her attitude
to the road deaths she was involved in.

Prosecutor Annie-Claude Chasse said the trial sent a clear
message for motorists.

"What we hope is that a clear message is sent to society that
we do not stop on the highway for animals. It's not worth
it."